Feb 2020 Consultation

Highways England ran a face-saving ‘mini-consultation’ about the Arundel bypass, with ‘corrected’ versions of documents on their website.   It lasted till March 1 2020.    The new consultation was on https://highwaysenlgnad.citizenspace.com/he/a27-arundel-2019-further-consultation-corrections/.  Here are some of the points people made in response:

This consultation is deeply flawed because:

• Not everyone who responded previously has been notified about this consultation
• The way the errors are presented is confusing and difficult to follow and will deter people from responding in any meaningful way
• Most people will not remember what information they used to come to their conclusions – many could have responded based on the initial documents which had even more errors, which are not highlighted here
• Highways England are discouraging people from responding by saying that the errors do not change any of their conclusions.  People will think why bother if it will make no difference?
• Highways England has still failed to correct seriously misleading information in its consultation documents

Before responding, please click here for more details and links

 

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Aug-Oct 2019 "Further Consultation": 

Click here to read our ABNC response to the Further Consultation

 

Six Wrongs don't make a Right

Six high speed dual carriageway options were offered.

This consultation was every bit as bad as what had gone before: 

1. The consultation questionnaire was biased, multiple choices gave no 'none of the above' option, and both paper and online questionnaires were open to fraud such as multiple completions

2. Impacts on the villages in particular Binsted were not made clear to consultees, and exhibitions in Walberton were still minimal compared with those in Arundel and elsewhere.

3. Detailed maps of the routes were hard to find and confusingly labelled with more than one system of numbers and of colours

4. The alignment closest to Arundel, which had previously been offered at 40mph, had gone up to 70mph. 

5. More ecological data was presented, but it had not been presented for Magenta or Grey options. 

6. Woodland impact areas were miscalculated to make routes using more of the existing road look more damaging. 

7. The benefit cost ratio value-for-money figures were cooked to look good by assuming Worthing-Lancing improvements had gone ahead. 

8. The Arundel Alternative, a less damaging more sustainable 40mph wide-single carriageway improvement supported by groups across the local area and by environmental organizations, was excluded based on mistaken figures and by an outdated predict-and-provide methodology which has been shown to create more traffic not reduce it.

A new Preferred Route Announcement is expected in early 2020.  Based on these dodgy foundations it is likely to be liable, again, to judicial review. 

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You can still influence what Highways England decide next:

click here to find out how

 

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More info:
 

More about the 2019 "Further Consultation"

 

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2018 Judicial Review

2017 Consultation Outcome

2017 Consultation Options

Pre-Consultation Evidence 2016-7

 

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These DEFRA family responses to the Further Consultation are also critical:

South Downs National Park Authority   Environment Agency     Natural England    Forestry England

Single Voice Letter from the Defra family

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Friends of the South Downs response to the Further Consultation